From Sketchpad to Photoshop

Posted on 8 September 2011 in Design | 1 comment

I’m really lazy. I don’t like getting up from my desk, waiting for the scanner / printer to warm up, making sure I have the right drivers, trying to get my bloody drawing to scan, etc. I have developed my own 21st century method of scanning and it works quite well! Here’s what I do:

1. Take a photo of my sketchbook

step 1 take photo of sketchbook 600x398 From Sketchpad to Photoshop

2. Email photo to myself

step 2 email self 1 200x300 From Sketchpad to Photoshop

step 2 email self 2 200x300 From Sketchpad to Photoshop

step 2 email self 3 200x300 From Sketchpad to Photoshop

3. Open in Photoshop

step 3 open image in photoshop 2 425x600 From Sketchpad to Photoshop

4. Crop & Fix

Screen Shot 2011 09 08 at 19.39.55 462x600 From Sketchpad to Photoshop Quickly, I crop out the other crap. Then I desaturate the image (CMD + SHIFT + U) and manually correct the levels (CMD + L). You’ll see that the levels look like something like this before: Screen Shot 2011 09 08 at 10.09.16 From Sketchpad to Photoshop Ideally, the whites need to be white and the blacks black. Afterwards, my levels looked like this: Screen Shot 2011 09 08 at 10.09.34 From Sketchpad to Photoshop I’ve never really thought about how I do this step, but I guess I drag the dark slider to the right of its mountain and the light slider to the left of its mountain, then play around with the midlevels until it looks right to me. IMG 2192b From Sketchpad to Photoshop These four steps are quick as anything for me and beats mucking about with a scanner, in my opinion.

  • Graham Jeffries

    Quick and easy! I read about people taking pictures of their receipts (for gifts, expensive items) so that they had a digital copy stored safely in case of return, warranty, etc.